“Locked, cocked and ready to rock,” said Marine Lance Corporal
Dimitri Gavriel, 29, before the start of the Fallujah offensive.
“That’s about how we feel.”
Most Brown University graduates don’t speak this way. In fact,
if Lance Corporal Gavriel had still been on the Brown campus, his
comments might have been censored as hate speech. But then, there
aren’t many Brown University graduates in Fallujah, where the very
concept of hate speech would give any Marine a chuckle. It was in
Fallujah, on November 19th, that Dimitri Gavriel was killed by
enemy fire.
Gavriel had been building a successful career on Wall Street as
a real estate securities analyst, working for firms including Banc
of America Securities, Credit Suisse First Boston, and J.P. Morgan.
When he was laid off during the market doldrums of 2002, he became
determined to join the Marines, inspired in part by the deaths of
four friends in the September 11th attacks. The Marines rejected
his initial application, concerned about his age and old injuries
from his high school and college wrestling career. He was 27 at the
time.
“He told them, ‘I know I’m a little bruised, I’m a little older
than the other guys. But I can do anything they can do,’” said
Gavriel’s sister, Christina. He trained and lost 40 pounds. The
Marines gave in, and took him.
The day before he left for boot camp, he was offered a new job
in finance. His friends and family pleaded with him to take it.
Christina Gavriel even told him he could live in her Manhattan
apartment rent free if he would stay in civilian life. But the next
morning, he headed for Parris Island as planned.
There are no battalions in the U.S. military composed of
securities analysts, just as there are none made up of NFL players.
Gavriel’s sacrifice, like that of Pat Tillman earlier this year,
stands out as a heroic anomaly within a field more associated with
getting ahead than getting even. Both Tillman and Gavriel attained
coveted, symbolic positions in American life — professional
athlete, professional capitalist — and traded them in for a common
destiny as patriots.
“He wanted to go there,” said Christina Gavriel. “Everyone else
in the family didn’t because they were scared for him. Once he
enlisted though, we all supported him.”
The NFL has taken steps this season to honor Tillman; one can
quibble with the adequacy of the league’s efforts, but their heart
seems to be in the right place. I hope that New York’s financial
community will do something similar to honor one of its own.
Perhaps some of the firms that employed him could start a program
in his name to provide financial and investment consulting to
military families at nominal charge. As for Brown University,
probably nothing could pay tribute more effectively, while also
redressing past sins, than a reinstatement of ROTC on campus.
I won’t hold my breath waiting for that to happen, but in light
of what Gavriel did, it seems only right to hope.
Neither Pat Tillman nor Dimitri Gavriel are deserving of greater
honors than their less famous, less prosperous comrades. But their
examples serve as reminders to the elite communities they left
behind: your very existence relies on the deeds of men like this,
and many other men who are often no older than boys. Men you might
not acknowledge if they asked you a question in the subway; men you
might sneer at if they asked for your autograph.
This is a very cynical, and hence very ironic, age. It is
sometimes difficult to appreciate that there are still people who
will give up everything for a principle. I cannot think of two
communities more in need of that reminder than professional sports
and business.
“I would like the people to remember him as a noble man,” said
Dimitri Gavriel’s mother, Penelope. Her son, she said, “wanted to
become a great leader.”
Mission accomplished.
